Aftershock
by Greenstuff
Summary: When Elena made her choice she didn't think she was going to have to live with it forever. SPOILERS for Season 3 finale. S/E, D/E, unrequited love. Nominated for No Rest For The Wicked Awards in Friday Night Bites Best Dark and/or Angst , 2012.


A/N: the season finale left my mind a bit of a mess, this is what the muses did with that mess.

**Aftershock**

"I'm a vampire?" My mind is spinning. The last thing I remember I was in Matt's truck. I'm sure there's something more, but my stubborn brain refuses to remember it.

"You're in transition."

I nod as if that makes sense. Internally I'm still struggling with an even more fundamental question, 'I'm dead?'

Stefan continues. "You were with Matt. His truck went off Wickery bridge." He looks down as me, compassion pouring from his warm brown eyes. "I found you too late-"

"Matt?" I look around the morgue, expecting to see Matt lying cold and dead on a table like the one I am still sitting on.

"Matt is fine." Stefan places a soothing hand on my shoulder. "You told me to save him. You wouldn't let me save you." He looks away for several seconds.

"Then how...?" I trail off, not sure how to phrase the question, not sure I want to say it out loud. I don't remember being given vampire blood. After Klaus tried to drain my blood I refused. I was tired, but a little anemia didn't kill me the first time he took two bags of blood, it wasn't going to the second time either.

I'm pretty certain no one gave me blood after I collapsed either. Jeremy wouldn't have taken me to the hospital if Caroline or Stefan had given me blood. So why wasn't I dead?

"After you collapsed Jeremy called 911. You had bleeding in your brain and Dr. Fell gave you vampire blood." Stefan still isn't looking at me, I wonder if it's guilt or anger that's keeping his eyes averted.

I take a deep breath, although I guess I don't need to do that anymore. Stefan's words roll over and over in my mind. I want to laugh a little, even though nothing about this is funny, wondering just how many times Meredith has accidentally made vampires while trying to cheat death. Me, Bill Forbes... How many others? A wave of anger rises up in me so strong it nearly overwhelms me. I've never been this angry in my life. I clench my fists until my nails bite into my palm. I feel a warm trickle of blood seeping over the backs of my fingers. Slowly the anger bleeds out too.

"I never wanted this." My voice is so soft I'm not sure he can hear it.

Stefan meets my eyes, "I know." He brushes my hair back, cupping my face. "You haven't completed the transition, you still have a choice." Stefan's voice is tremulous, I know the words cost him dearly. The same way I know he means them and that no matter what I choose he will stand by me.

I'm grateful for his unending support, but it hurts too. Doesn't he care? If I don't feed I'll die, for good this time. If he loves me, shouldn't he at least try to talk me out of it?

But then I hear Damon's voice down the hall and I realize Stefan doesn't have to try and talk me into anything, he has Damon. Damon who would probably force feed me human blood if he thought it was the only way to keep me alive. Damon, whose love terrifies and thrills me.

Damon and Stefan aren't the only ones who love me. I see my brother's stricken face the day our parents died and I know what I have to do. "I can't just leave Jeremy. I'm all he has."

The door to the morgue bangs open before I can finish. Damon stands frozen in the door for a second and then he is beside me, pulling me against his chest. "Never do that to me again," he whispers fiercely into my hair before letting go.

Stefan looks uncomfortable and I realize I haven't told him my decision. The wave of relief I feel catches me off guard and for a moment all I can do is look at the floor and wait for someone to tell me what comes next.

What comes next is a pile of paperwork to cover up the fact that I died and then came back to life. A blood bag to complete the transition and a hug from my brother that tests the limits of my self-control, but also makes me feel like I made the right choice.

Stefan drives me to the Salvatore home, we've all agreed it's the best place until I learn to control the urge to drink my brother's blood. Damon has disappeared. Stefan says he's looking for Bonnie and Caroline, but part of me thinks it's more than that.

I settle into a bedroom on the second floor. If Stefan notices that I chose the room closest to Damon's or furthest from his he doesn't comment, for which I'm grateful. It's a nice room. Not too big, heavy curtains to block out the light until Bonnie makes me a daylight ring.

Stefan leaves me, but I can hear him hovering in the hallway. I tried to send him to check on Jeremy and get me some clothes from the house, but he said Caroline would take care of it. I know he's worried about me, but what I need right now is to be alone. All the love and support is suffocating me.

x x x

"How's the patient?" Damon leans carelessly against my door.

I roll my eyes. In truth, I feel like a patient, trapped and smothered. I know they mean well, but I could use more than thirty seconds alone to figure out what comes next. "I'm fine, Damon. I fed. Bonnie is making me a daylight ring."

He smiles. "Good." He shifts and for the first time I notice the bag at his feet.

"You're leaving?"

"I promised Stefan..." He trails off, but I can read the rest in his expression. 'If you chose him I would get out of the way.'

"Like you promised you would never leave me again?"

"I already broke that promise." He says softly.

"And look what happened." I know it's not fair, but I don't want him to go. I can't lose him. Doesn't he realize that everything is different now?

He flinches and immediately I wish I could take the words back, but I can't. My emotions are all over the place. Stefan says I'll get used to it, but I'm not so sure. I'm not like him. I want to be. A part of me knows that is why I chose him. Stefan is the "right" choice. He's good for me, he's safe, and he will always support me in my choices. He saved my life, not just when he pulled me from the water, but when he came into my life and reminded me how to live.

But now I really am dead, and I don't know if Stefan is the one to teach me how to deal with that. The girl he loved, the one who never wanted to be a vampire, she's gone now. And even though I don't have a clue what to do with that… with this new version of myself that I never, ever wanted. I know I can't just step back into my life as it was. It's only been a day, but everything has changed.

Damon isn't safe. He's defensive and impulsive and lashes out recklessly when he's hurting. But he is loyal and brave and he _loves._ He waited 145 years for Katharine, he took away Rose's fear and pain and then ended her suffering, and he would do anything for his brother, even leave Mystic Falls and never look back.

Damon looks like he wants to hit something. "What do you want from me?"

I'm taken aback by the raw pain underlying the frustration in his tone. "I-I don't know."

He shakes his head. "Yes you do, you're just afraid to say it." my mother's words in Damon's voice, yet they still ring true. I wonder if he knows he's quoting her or if it's one of those coincidences that make me think there's a higher power moving pieces around a chess board for its own amusement.

"You want a love that consumes you. You want passion and adventure, and even a little danger?" I ask, mimicking the first conversation we ever had. One I didn't remember until last night.

His lips quirk and I know he remembers too. "It's what everyone wants."

"What do you want, Damon?"

In an instant he's standing right in front of me. "I want you to get everything that you want." His blue eyes are earnest, his fingers gentle as they brush my cheek. "I want you to be happy."

I want to say something, anything, but empty words stick in my throat. All I can do is hold his gaze and hope the words I can't bring myself to say somehow telegraph through my eyes.

Damon steps back and smiles, it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I guess this is goodbye."

I rise to my feet, my knees are unaccountably unsteady, and there's a prickling heat behind my eyes, maybe it's those vampire emotions again, maybe it's something else entirely. "Where are you going?"

He shrugs. "Europe, California, I haven't been to South America since the 1890s. There's a whole big world outside of Mystic Falls, I'm sure I'll find something to pass the time."

He sounds so casual about it that I almost believe him, but then he smiles again and it still doesn't make it all the way to his eyes and I know with a certainty I never had before that I'm the reason he is leaving, and more importantly, I don't want him to go. Because he was right. I do want a love that consumes me. Even though it terrifies me. Even though I don't want to hurt Stefan. I love Damon. I'm _in_ love with Damon. I don't know when it happened. I didn't want it to. But he is under my skin and I realize, in this moment as he reaches for his bag, that I can't let him go.

I'm across the room faster than I knew I could move. I press Damon back against the doorframe and then my lips are on his. For a glorious moment he kisses me back. But suddenly he pushes me away.

I stagger slightly, dizzy with confusion and desire. "Damon..."

"Stop it Elena." There is raw pain in his voice and my heart constricts.

"Why?" it's the only word my mouth can shape with my brain still stuck on the sensation of his lips on mine.

"You chose Stefan. I'm not going to do this again."

I realize he's talking about Katharine and for the first time since she appeared in Mystic Falls, pretending to be me, I feel like I understand her. 'It's okay to love them both, I did,' it seemed like such a heartless thing to say in that moment, but now I get it. Because I do love them both. In different ways, yes, but it's all love. And how do you let someone you love walk away?

"So that's it? You're just going to walk out of here and never come back." My eyes fill with tears and I blink furiously, cursing my heightened emotions for the thousandth time. "I'll never see you again?"

Damon shrugs. "You'll see me again." He picks up his bag and slings it over his shoulder. "But right now, you need to let me go."

Before I can say anything, he turns and then he's gone. I could run after him. I almost do. But even though I feel like my heart is being wrenched from my chest, I know I need to let him go. It's not our time. Maybe in ten years, or fifty, things will be different. The thought isn't as comforting as I'd like it to be.

x x x

It's been one hundred and twenty five years, and yet the Salvatore boarding house somehow looks exactly the same. The house I grew up in has new owners now. Jeremy died over sixty years ago. A heart attack. The doctor said he went quickly, painlessly. I had him buried in the Gilbert plot in Mystic Falls, even though he'd left at nineteen and never returned. The problem with having a vampire for a sister, it was hard to stay in one place for more than a couple years at a time.

His funeral was the first time I came back home. I didn't stay long. There was nothing left for me in Mystic falls. My friends were all grown or gone. I stayed with Sheila. Bonnie's daughter who knew what I was the second we met. She takes after her mother, or I guess she took after her mother. Both are long gone now. I know Sheila had kids, three or four if memory serves, but I never met them. She wanted to protect them from the things that go bump in the night. Who could blame her?

I take a deep breath and knock on the door. It was Damon's idea to install a new line of humans in the Salvatore boarding house, but it was Stefan's to make it my family line. Jeremy didn't like it, but when his son agreed to my offer or a free house for him and his family, as long as they always kept a room or two for the Salvatores. Still, I never quite know what I am coming 'home' to.

The door opens and I meet a very familiar pair of blue eyes. "Damon." His name falls from my lips even as I'm throwing myself into his arms. I hug him as tightly as I can.

Damon hugs me back perfunctorily. "Hello Elena."

I drop my arms to my sides, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

"Where's my brother?"

I meet his eyes and answer in the most casual tone I can manage, "I don't know. Haven't seen him in years."

"Don't tell me there's trouble in paradise."

"Stefan and I broke up a hundred and twenty years ago, Damon. Where have you been?"

"Spent a half century in Italy, a few years in Kenya." He smiles, it isn't a nice smile.

"I looked for you."

"Well you've found me." He's still smiling that fake-happy smile. It makes my skin crawl. I remember this Damon. I met him in 2009. This is the Damon who wanted his brother and everyone else to suffer because he was suffering. This was the Damon who snapped my brother's, father's and history teacher's necks because he could. This is not the man I've been dreaming about every night since I turned.

"What happened to you?"

He smirks and steps into the house. I can hear the family in the kitchen, Damon pours himself a drink and slumps against the couch. "Learned a language, met a Shaman…"

"That's not what I mean and you know it." I snap. Vampire me has a shorter temper than human me ever did. "You said we'd see each other again."

"And here we are, seeing each other." He said gesturing broadly with his tumbler.

"Because Penelope called me and told me you were here." I reply, crossing my arms across my chest.

"You asked the family to spy on me?" He clucks his tongue. "Naughty girl."

"Well maybe if you didn't flee the continent every time I came close to finding you, I wouldn't have had to."

"Ugh, I know. You've been chasing me for over 100 years, I thought you would be over it by now."

"You knew?"

"You're not exactly subtle."

In under a second I'm across the room standing in front of him. I slap him across the face, hard.

"Come on Elena. You made your choice. Live with it."

"That was _before_." I hold his gaze, willing him to understand.

"Well right now I'm telling you I never want to see you again."

His words hit home, landing squarely on the heavily locked box where I hide all of my insecurities, all the voices that told me the only way Damon could be evading me for so long was if he was trying to. "You don't mean that."

He has me pressed against the wall faster than most people can blink. His hands tight on my hips. He lowers his head, lips inches from mine.

For a moment I think he is going to kiss me and my eyes fall shut.

He doesn't kiss me. Instead he hisses in my ear, "I _hate_ you, Elena. If you ever try to find me again I will stake you through the heart."

I gasp, my heart twisting in my chest. I know I hurt him when I chose Stefan, but I never imagined that he would stop loving me so completely.

"Now get the fuck out of my house." He let me go and stepped back.

"Damon…" I reach for him. He can't hate me. I won't let him.

Without hesitation, he picks up a pencil from the table and stabs it into my abdomen.

Fire screams through my veins and I cry out and collapse onto the floor, my fingers scrabbling to grasp the sticky end of the pencil.

"Next time, it will be your heart." He says, stepping over me and walking away without looking back.

* * *

A/N: Originally this was going to end on a much fluffier notes, but Damon!muse had unresolved rage issues. I hope you enjoyed it anyway :)

Anyone who also reads my Rookie Blue stuff, the next chapter of LAYN is taking shape and I am hoping to have it out in the next week or so.


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